Using statistic and bibliometric methods to characterize scientific cooperation between China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) and South Korea through their bilateral co-authored papers covered by the Science Citation Index CD-ROM, 1991-2010, in our paper we exploit the feature of their cooperation in four levels: time sequence, academic community, key fields, and institution distribution. From the time sequence we know that collaboration between China and Korea starts in 1991, reaching the first peak during 2004-2007. As for the academic community, the number of Chinese corresponding authors (2414) is slightly lower than that of Korea (2700). Regarding the 27 high yield authors, there are only 4 coming from China. Korea has a higher active level than Chinese authors. China and Korea tend to cooperate with each other on strong disciplines such as physics, chemistry, material science, engineering, mathematics, pharmaceutical, computer science and biology. Furthermore, they also attach great importance to basic research and high-tech cooperation. Besides, Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks at the top 1 among the distribution of institutions. As a majority of the collaborative institutions are universities, the participation of non-university institutions is relatively low. There are 7 Korean universities among the top ten institutions, while Yanbian University and Tsinghua University in China rank respectively as third and fourth. Seoul National University, accompanied by Korea University and Yonsei University as the three top Korean universities, is also among the top among the cooperating institutions.

Haustein, S., Tunger, D., Heinrichs, G., & Baelz, G. (2011). Reasons for and developments in international scientific collaboration: Does an Asia-Pacific research area exist from a bibliometric point of view. Scientometrics, 86, 727-746.

4.

KICOS (2008). Statistics on International R&D Program. Seoul: Korea Foundation for International Cooperation of Science and Technology.

Kim, M.-J. (2007). A bibliometric analysis of the effectiveness of Korea's Biotechnology Stimulation Plans, with a comparison with four other Asian nations. Scientometrics, 72(3), 371-388.

9.

Kwon, K.-S., Park, H.-W., So, M.-H., & Leydesdorff, L. (2012). Has globalization strengthened South Korea's national research system? National and international dynamics of the Triple Helix of scientific co-authorship relationships in South Korea. Scientometrics, 90, 163 - 176.

10.

Lee, Y.-Y. (2009). The discussion of international university scientific cooperation between China and Korea universities,--taking the Chongqing university of posts and telecommunications as an example. Learn To, 4, 42-46.

11.

MOST (2003). The 20 years of HAN Project. Seoul: Ministry of Science and Technology.

12.

Suttmeier, R.P. (2008). State, self-organization, and identity in the building of Sino-U.S. cooperation in science and technology. Scientometrics, 32(1), 5-31.